MSNBC

There's practically nothing as delicious as watching liberals eat their own, especially in the current post-election environment when the Obama-loving media are revelling in Republicans going after one another.

With this in mind, grab some popcorn and your favorite beverage as you watch MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch ask CNN's Piers Morgan Monday, "When did you become such a crazy liberal?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Al Sharpton joined the sequester scare-mongering squad on his MSNBC show this evening.  Just one problem: the Reverend Al got one of his "facts" embarrassingly wrong. Sharpton claimed that the effect of the sequester would be to close Rep. Paul Ryan's hometown airport in Janesville, Wisconsin.  Nuh-uh. 

Yes, Southern Wisconsin Regional in Janesville is on a list of 200 airports, 100 of which would have their towers closed under the sequester.  So for starters, contrary to what Sharpton suggests, the odds are only 1-in-2 that even if the sequester hits, there will be any effect whatsoever on the Janesville airport.  But in any case, closing a tower by no means closes an airport. Is Al unaware that of the roughly 20,000 airports in the USA, only about 500—less than 3%—have towers? Even if the tower closes, flights will continue to flow in and out of Janesville.  There are well-established FAA procedures that pilots follow to communicate with each other at non-towered fields.  Shame on Sharpton for his false scare-mongering.  View the video after the jump.   

You've surely heard by now that Michelle Obama presented the Academy Award for Best Picture last evening.

On Monday, MSNBC host Alex Wagner, appearing on Hardball, said, "Could Laura Bush have done it? No. If she'd appeared at the Oscars, I don't think she would have been greeted with the same amount of warmth" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

According to TV critic David Zurawik, MSNBC's hiring of ex-Obama officials David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs makes the so-callend news network almost "a bona fide organ of state propaganda."

Hours after this was published Monday, Hardball's Chris Matthews offered his services to Hillary Clinton - along with those of MSNBC contributors Howard Fineman and Joan Walsh - in order to get her elected president in 2016 (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Call her MoveOn.Mika . . . Bob Woodward has demonstrated that President Obama was not telling the truth during the third presidential debate when he flatly stated that "the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” In fact, it was two Obama aides who devised the plan, and Obama himself who approved it.

But when Joe Scarborough wanted to get those facts on the record this morning, Mika Brzezinski repeatedly declared that discussing Obama's failure to tell the truth was "silly." Things got heated between the co-hosts at one point as Mika cut Joe off, saying "I need to talk."  And trying to end the uncomfortable discussion, Mika actually announced "I'm moving on." View the video after the jump.

As press secretary to President Obama, Robert Gibbs was often in the obfuscation business.  Now that he's been freed from that role and become a news analyst—albeit at MSNBC—Gibbs has become considerably more candid. Readers will recall, for example, that he described Chuck Hagel as "unimpressive and unprepared" at his Senate confirmation hearing.

Today, Gibbs took that frankness a significant step further.  On Up With Chris Hayes, Gibbs stated that as press secretary, he had been ordered not to acknowledge the existence of the drone program. View the video after the jump.

In yesterday's Washington Post, Bob Woodward repeated what the essence of what he wrote about sequestration in his book, “The Price of Politics.”

Why? Because leftist media stooges like MSNBC's Chuck Todd, who is upset that conservatives and Republicans are "begging the media to say it's Obama that started the sequester, not them" (well, in general, Chuck, we'd like to see you tell the truth, but we've long since given up expecting it, let alone begging for it) insist on claiming that it was a Republican idea. It wasn't. Woodward re-elaborates (internal links are in original; bolds are mine):

Yesterday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner featured a discussion about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is anathema to the environmental left, and which President Obama cynically delayed a decision on until after the 2012 election.  With the decision to approve or decline the project still looming for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry -- who technically is the point person on approving the project -- Melinda Pierce of the Sierra Club was brought on the panel to discuss the pending doom we face with climate change, and disseminate the message that we can’t drill our way to energy independence.

To Wagner’s credit she did cite a piece from, of all things, Joe Nocera of the New York Times to give an alternative view to Pierce’s. Whereas Pierce responded by equating the approval of the pipeline to setting off a “carbon bomb”:

Appearing on Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC to discuss the upcoming budget sequestration, Bloomberg View columnist Margaret Carlson touted President Obama's ability "to manipulate some of these cuts so that they're going to hurt and people are going to see them," in order to put pressure on congressional Republicans. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Carlson then proclaimed: "I think we'll start hearing, you know, squeals, when, as [Transportation Secretary] Ray LaHood predicts, you know, we see those first lines at the airport. And it may even hurt, you know, those wealthy Republicans who don't have private jets, when air traffic control and the transportation security lines grow longer."

After dismissing the argument that President Obama was to blame for the sequester as "dumb" on Thursday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, NBC political director Chuck Todd further mocked the notion on Friday's program: "Republicans have been playing, well, an inside game, the inside the Beltway game, trying to build support for their position against the cuts and begging the media to say it's Obama that started the sequester, not them." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Woody Guthrie was an American original who wrote some enduring music and did a lot to publicize the plight of the people of the Dust Bowl.  There's just one little inconvenient truth about Guthrie: he ran in Communist circles.  Though it's reported that he never officially joined the party, he's quoted as saying that the "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party." He also wrote 174 columns for the Communist Party's Daily Worker newspaper.

But nary a mention was made of Woody's Communist connections on Morning Joe today.  Instead, Mika Brzezinski giggled like a schoolgirl over the numerous, explicit sex scenes contained in a recently-discovered novel that Guthrie wrote, House of Earth.  View the video after the jump.

Marcus Davis, a Houston, Texas-based restaurant owner, defends murals of Barack Obama painted on the exterior of his establishment with an AR-15.

Even though he is aware of this, Martin Bashir - one of MSNBC's most vocal gun control advocates - praised the proprietor of The Breakfast Klub during a lengthy interview Thursday (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On her 1 p.m. et hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell mounted her high horse in condemning Republican senators who questioned defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel about his connection to what turned out to be a fake organization: "Without even checking the factual basis for their questions....You can ask anything and create a sound bite, and then people pick it up in social media, and it's off and running." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

People in glass houses should not throw stones. Mitchell infamously aired a deceptively edited clip of Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential race that made him seem out of touch. In September of 2011, she took Republican House Speaker John Boehner wildly out of context and accused him of being "disrespectful" to President Obama.  

Sadly, MSNBC cannot follow sister network NBC’s lead in reporting the story of disgraced Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill) and his impending prison sentence for illegally using campaign funds for personal usage. 

On the February 20 edition of NBC Nightly News as well as on the February 21 edition of Today, both shows correctly identify Jesse Jackson Jr. as a Democrat, but their MSNBC morning show Morning Joe skipped the important detail.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

MSNBC's Chuck Todd on Thursday echoed a liberal columnist and mocked the idea of blaming Barack Obama for sequester spending cuts, even though it was the President's idea. On Thursday's Daily Rundown, Todd sneered, "Of all the dumb things Washington does, this 'who started it' argument has proven to be one of the dumber ones, especially since we're so close to the actual cuts going into place." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Todd's talking points sound very similar to assertions made by liberal Newsweek/Daily Beast writer Michael Tomasky. On Tuesday, he admitted that Obama came up with the plan, but wondered why it matters. The sub-headline offered this Daily Beast article proclaimed, "Conservatives keep reminding everyone that the sequester was Obama’s idea. But, says Michael Tomasky, that doesn’t mean he’s to blame for the current crisis."

Mika Brzezinski immediately asked her producer if the seven-second delay had worked.  It hadn't.  On today's Morning Joe, praising the "authenticity" of the New Jersey governor, an unbleeped Mort Zuckerman said there's "no bull****" about Chris Christie.

Joe Scarborough sought to slough off the incident, saying no seven-second delay was necessary: "you got a lot of farmers saying that in western Pennsylvania. That's no big deal."  Mika begrudgingly mouthed agreement but her tone and body language left no doubt that she was uncomfortable with Mort's excursion into the scatalogical.  View the video after the jump. H/t NB reader Cobokat.

On Wednesday's Hardball, Chris Matthews, who previously ranted about too much "hate" in politics, sneeringly compared the House GOP to Hamas. Talking to Jonathan Allen of Politico, Matthews snarled at Barack Obama's congressional opponents: "Who is the President talking to? Is it just a clique of a bunch of right-wingers who don't want to talk to anybody? Are they Hamas?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

It was left to Allen, no conservative, to talk Matthews down: "They are not Hamas." It's clear that the cable anchor doesn't listen to himself when he talks. On January 21, he whined about too much partisanship and over-the-top language: "Why can't politics be a matter of belief and honest disagreement, not hatred?" If only the January 21 Matthews could ask the February 20 Matthews this.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir bashed the Tea Party Patriots for creating a picture of Karl Rove dressed in a Nazi uniform as part of a fund-raising email.

While he ridiculed "Conservative hypocrisy on Hitler at its blatant best," Bashir conveniently ignored his own Nazi references to conservatives (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Orlando Sentinel reported Tuesday evening that the Universal Orlando theme park will be ending health care benefits for part-time workers at the close of 2013, citing provisions of ObamaCare that go into effect on January 1 of next year (h/t Hot Air). "Universal is one of the largest employers in Central Florida, with approximately 17,000 employees. It has thousands of part-time workers," notes the Sentinel.

Universal Orlando is, of course, a division of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC and its cable network sister MSNBC. As we have quite exhaustively documented, MSNBC is an enthusiastic cheerleader of all things Obama, including his policy positions such as ObamaCare. It remains to be seen to what extent NBC News and MSNBC will report this story.

On Tuesday's MSNBC Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough blamed conservative media outlets for recent Republican electoral defeats: "...for conservatives that think they have to stay in their own little media world, since Rush Limbaugh went on the air and became a national figure, Republicans have lost five out of the last six presidential elections in the popular vote. Since Fox News went on the air in 1996, Republicans have lost four out of five." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Co-host Mika Brzezinski snidely chimed in: "Please keep doing what you're doing." Scarborough continued his rant: "So when Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had to go up against a media culture that absolutely hated them, that despised them, that mocked them, that ran them into the ground every night, and there was no conservative outlet, they won 49 states....But for people that think...they have to stay in this little box, I've got bad news for you. It's not working."

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is starting to get completely unhinged.

On Tuesday's Hardball, he accused Republicans of using "Cold War CIA tactics to destabilize our own country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In 2008, a then-MSNBC host mocked George W. Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, for signing up with the "home team" of Fox News. Yet, on Tuesday it was announced that Barack Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, will be joining NBC and MSNBC as an analyst. A NBC press release hyped that Axelrod "will contribute frequently across all broadcasts and platforms of both networks." (There was no mention as to whether MSNBC is Obama's "home team.)

On February 6, 2008, then-MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams trashed Fox News for signing Rove: "The folks over at Fox News are just thrilled about what I'm calling Karl Rove's homecoming, his debut last as a political commentator and the home team cheered them on again and again." Abrams, who is now at ABC, sneered, "Come on. Give me a break."

Chuck Todd can't imagine what could ever have given conservative politicians the idea that the MSM is unfriendly to them. C'mon Chuck: we know you're a NewsBusters reader.  Every day here, we document the liberal media's hostility to conservatives.

On today's Morning Joe, NBC political director Todd repeatedly spoke of a supposed "mythology" among conservative politicians and their staffs that the "big, bad non-conservative media" is "out to get conservatives."  That in turn explains why, according to Todd, conservative officials are reluctant to appear on non-Fox shows.  View the video after the jump.

Wait a sec: aren't liberals supposed to be the edgy dudes who like to buck the established order?  The ones who glorify guys with the guts to "speak truth to power"? So what could possibly have turned these hipsters into a bunch of suddenly stodgy sourpusses reaching for their Miss Manners?  Looks like in-your-face is no longer in style when the upstart in question is—horrors!—a conservative!

Continuing his campaign for proper etiquette--and against Ted Cruz--Frank Bruni appeared on Morning Joe today.  The New York Times columnist recently wrote a cranky column calling Cruz an "an ornery, swaggering piece of work."  Bruni took things one stodgy step further, calling Cruz a "whippersnapper." Frank fulminated over Ted's temerity in actually voting against the august John Kerry.  View the video after the jump.

Although every holiday may seem like Obama Day to Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host used the date often devoted to Lincoln and Washington as an excuse to wonder if the current President is headed to Mount Rushmore. On President's Day, Matthews thrilled, "Is Barack Obama going for it? Is he set on becoming one of the great presidents in history?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The cable anchor, who famously declared that Obama caused a "thrill going up my leg," first declared, "I'm not talking about Mt. Rushmore but perhaps the level right below it." He later went back on this and fantasized about the President watching him: "If [Obama] were hearing us talking about him maybe mounting Mount Rushmore, getting up there with the great presidents...what would he be thinking? 'That's exactly what I'm doing?'"

Apparently it's okay for MSNBC panels to sit around and tell race jokes on-air. Host Melissa Harris-Perry had her panel guests tell their "favorite race joke" or "best punch line" on race on her Sunday show and laughter ranged between nervous and uproarious. Harris-Perry capped it all off with a Jewish joke.

After discussing if the best way to give a "social critique" on race was through humor, Harris-Perry told her panel, "Okay, so give me your favorite race joke or your best punch line on it." If a Fox News panel sat around and told race jokes on the set, there would be an uproar and accusations of racism would be directed at the network. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Remember all that talk about a post-racial society if Barack Obama was elected president?

On the Martin Bashir show Monday, the host introduced Lehigh Professor James Peterson as a new MSNBC contributor, and virtually the first words out of Peterson's mouth were, "structural racism," "structural inequality," and "an over-aggressive criminal justice system that is racially biased" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It appears as though the wheels have fallen off the wagon at MSNBC.  On her February 18, 2013 show Now w/ Alex Wagner, host Wagner teased that her fellow MSNBCer Chris Matthews was a “national treasure.”

Apparently Ms. Wagner considers someone who compares the GOP to Nazi’s and calls Republicans racist on a daily basis a “national treasure.”  In honor of Wagner, we have compiled a short list of the best of Chris Matthews, to show just what makes him the national treasure that he is.

The trashing of Ted Cruz continues apace in the bien-pensant MSM. From the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to Politico and elsewhere, the liberal media has the new Republican Senator from Texas in its sights.

Joe Scarborough is clearly camped out on the Cruz-bashing bandwagon.  Earlier this month, so offended by Cruz was the sensitive Scarborough that he wouldn't deign to mention him by name.  Today, not to be outdone by Frank Bruni, who called Cruz "an ornery, swaggering piece of work," Scarborough declared that Cruz acts like "a carnival barker at a local Republican event."  View the video after the jump.